Due to the vision and support of President John T. Casteen III, Provost Arthur Garson, Jr., and our generous donors, Phase I of our Campaign for the new U.Va. Art Museum is complete!

Renovations to the Thomas H. Bayly Building, totaling $2.5 million, took place over the summer months. Our reopening this fall highlights restored galleries complete with new lighting, fire suppression, electrical upgrades, and climate control technology. These key features are critical to the care and display of the Museum’s collections. In addition, these upgrades have placed the Museum in the category of University Museums that will have the opportunity to bring high-caliber traveling exhibitions to the Charlottesville community.

The renovated U.Va. Art Museum is not only about renewed space. We have completely redesigned our programmatic vision and the ways we can bring object-based inquiry and study to our visitors. Our guests will now be able to see museum work in action through two new spaces featuring “open storage”—our Print Study Library and our new Objects Study Library (scheduled to open this January). Visitors will have unique opportunities to explore objects in these new teaching spaces with intimate lectures by leading scholars and museum professionals as well as by interacting with the Museum’s staff as they prepare for exhibitions.

New gallery spacesRenovation, summer 2009, and reopening, September 10, 2009

Images
Top, left to right: Bruce Boucher, Director, University of Virginia Art Museum; Jim Leach, Chairman of the National Endowment for Humanitites; and Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Vice Provost for the Arts.

The University of Virginia Art Museum exhibits art from around the world dating from ancient times to the present. In addition to its permanent collection, the Museum offers changing exhibitions, accompanied by related programs and publications.

Reproduction, including downloading of Albers, Davis, Frost, Shapiro, and Warhol works is prohibited by copyright lawsand international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.